Running On Fumes
Wow, my old bud, Roger "El" Simon has really taken the Bill Ayers thing one bridge too far. Sorry, Rog.
You can read his whole post but here's what I understand to be his argument. That when Obama was an adult entering Harvard Law School in 1988, the movie Running on Empty had just come out and was nominated for two Oscars. OK, so far.
Roger then argues that everyone with a brain knew that the film --about two underground radicals with a family in tow-- was really about Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.
Therefore, argues, Simon, Obama can't possibly argue that he didn't know what Ayers was all about because he must have seen the film and figured it all out.
Two problems with this argument:
1) Running on Empty actually kinda sucked as a movie and who the hell knows if Obama actually ever saw the film just like another 250 million other Americans didn't. ( It's MUCH more likely he didn't than he did).
2) If he did see it, how would anyone presume that he would figure out it was really about Ayers who he had yet to meet and whose name he had probably never heard?
Here comes the funny part. The really funny part that I think, sincerely, answers that second question.
I actually knew Ayers and Dohrn -- at least remotely-- from the 1960's when I was a member of SDS (though in a faction who already way back then thought Ayers-Dohrn were bonkers as most SDS'ers did). In 1986-87 when Running On Empty was in production --unbeknownst to me-- I was commissioned to write a script by a production company affiliated with Tri-Star studios about radicals on the run!
By the time I finished my opus -- titled Necessary Steps -- news broke that Running on Empty was about to wrap. That dead-ended any hopes that my screenplay would be produced (but I was happy to be paid just for writing it). By the way, when I wrote my own script -- about two radical bombers into the second decade in the underground-- I never thought of basing it on Ayers-Dohrn.
All this meaning I had an extra-special super-duper interest in watching Running when it finally came out. I've seen it 2-3 times in the intervening 20 years. And while it is obviously, loosely based on the general Weathermen experience, it had NEVER occurred to me until I read Simon's column tonite that it had anything to do with Ayers-Dohrn. The film characters aren't even remotely evocative of the real life pair.
Now, admittedly I'm not as smart as Obama (couldn't dream of Harvard Law). And maybe not as smart as Roger. But with all my personal connections to this story I never made the supposed connection to the real life couple until I read Roger's column a few minutes ago. So how on earth can one seriously argue that Obama must have -- in a year when he was preoccupied with entering law school, when SDS had disappeared from the political scene and Obama had not yet entered public life?
Come on, Roger. You're free to support McCain. But why lower yourself to this level and purport something as ridiculous as being able to read some other guy's frame of mind 20 years ago? Or to even assume he saw a certain movie and unpacked its references from an earlier generation?
In any case, as an ex-radical yourself, you have had plenty of associations with revolutionaries, Black Panthers etc etc. So what? What does that mean about your own judgment? In my opinion, absolutely nothing either way. You changed your views politically and no one holds you guilty for abuses committed by others you knew, or felt political affinity with, at some earlier point in your life. Let's get real. Saying that Obama has a connection to terrorists is like saying Pajamasmedia does because its founder was once a pinko. Yawn.
Your argument gives the words running on empty a whole new meaning, my friend.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Roger Simon is giving a bad name to assholes.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Gee, Marc, thanks for stepping in and validating everything I said about Ayers and Dohrn…and that 60’s radicals who were really 60’s radicals didn’t usually become bomb making and throwing proxies for Hoover and Nixon–but at worst become conservatives–like your friend Simon–whose minds become time bombs, eventually imploding,–like your pal’s did.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Ahmed Says:
October 6th, 2008 at 9:12 pm (From the other thread)
To be fair, although I although I profoundly diagree with alterman and gitlin wher they argue that the radicalism and excess of the sixties gave us Nixon,
Extract from email I sent to The Nation sometime ago re that traitor, Alterman:
…how does one email Mr Alterman to offer him the opportunity to get in touch with reality and a pin to deflate his megalomaniacal sense of self importance about thinking that he is doing anything at all constructive to “correct” right wing misinformation when his collusion with the attack on Nader aids the greatest coup the right wing could ever have hoped for:
To succeed in seeing a pack of liberals turned into a slavering pack of judases braying for the blood of the one American presidential candidate that actually had the stones and will to dismantle their agenda. what a sweet victory that must have been thanks to people like Alterman who fell hook line and sinker for the jingoistic gibber lobbed against Nader and the whole progressive dog and pony show that folded its tent and went off the cliff like a fat lot of lemmings.
YOU, Mr Aleterman, and the rest of the pack of sniveling weasles are truly the ones who are responsible for 4 more years of Bush.
You guys would be out of business if a man like Nader ever got elected. You couldnt whine and thump your chests anymore. and pretend to be something you are absolutely NOT.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Right, Obama was totally surprised to learn about Ayers. Being an anarchist, a bomber, and an attempted murderer are flaws that are easy to miss, but only if you don’t consider them flaws.
I suppose that Obama saw this picture of his friend, when they were serving on the Woods board together and Obama received a campaign contribution from him, but Obama didn’t know that was an American flag under Ayer’s feet–or, do you think he just didn’t care or admired him for it?
October 7th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Never saw ‘Running on Empty’ (so I guess that means I’m clean) but I actually do recommend a novel by Neil Gordon, ‘The Company You Keep’, which deals with Weathermen resurfacing after decades underground. Read it recently and found it very moving (so I guess that means I’m not clean).
Anyways, what if young Barack didn’t see the flick. I’m sure at some point he passed beneath the theater marquee, maybe even smelled some buttered popcorn — that should be enough.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:00 am
I’m sure more people saw Running on Empty than saw My Man Adam . . .
October 7th, 2008 at 8:05 am
I started college in 1988 and never heard of this film. And I watch way too many films. Dude’s thesis is a little on the thin side.
October 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Ditto, DanO. I started college one year after you, am a big movie fan (though no expert, mind you), and had no awareness of this movie’s existence until now. Republican desperation is getting more entertaining each day.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am
As I recall, Roger Simon’s book The Big Fix included a character who was a radical (bomber?) on the run. So maybe Simon himself knows one or more Ayers/Dohrn fellow-travelers.
I liked Running on Empty. It certainly was not a political movie, more “post-political.” Though I had some familiarity with the Ayers/Dohrn family (at least the Dohrn branch), it didn’t occur to me that the movie was about them.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
“maybe Simon himself knows one or more Ayers/Dohrn fellow-travelers”
Knows one? He probably is one.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am
GOsh as Palin kept reminding Joe—lets stay in the present–her very recent associations with witch doctors, anti semites, and secessionists and nut bags like Vogler proclaiming his hatred of the American government…
So Woody and the Outhouse…associate THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniG9l_7its&eurl=http://
This includes the quote from Vogler “the fires of hell are frozen
glaciers compared to my hatred for the American goverment and I won’t be
buried under their damn flag”
her entire speech for the AIP Convention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwvPNXYrIyI&feature=related
October 7th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
The best of the “radical underground” oeuvre, I think, is Vida, by Marge Piercy.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Marc, the “fedora” also believes that the community reinvestment act or CRA created the 60 trillion dollar credt-default-swap ponzi scheme that is destroying 100 year old investment banks, sending Ireland and Iceland to the IMF and reanimating Karl Marx as we speak.
He isnt kidding, he’s authentically dense.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I liked Running on Empty. Strange that many movie fans have never heard of it despite the Academy and Golden Globe nominations it received.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
You must be a Weatherman sympathizer!
October 7th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Judd Hirsch does not look like Bill Ayers.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
That when Obama was an adult entering Harvard Law School in 1988, the movie Running on Empty had just come out and was nominated for two Oscars.
I don’t imagine Roger L. Simon ever attended law school. If he did, he would certainly know that first year law students have time for studying - and that’s about it.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Roger “El” Simon wrote:
“One thing I’ve noticed: the more honest and forthcoming you are, the more people appreciate it.”
The more you stroke people’s ego and tell them what they want to hear, the more sycophants you attract. And to think I used to read his blog with great interest - that was when I was more of a centrist.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I think the Big Fix was written by a different “Simon” who is now one of the brains behind Pajamas Media. And the radical in that book (and movie starring fellow CSUN alum Richardreyfuss) was based on the one and only Abie Hoffman.
October 8th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
RLC,
No, it’s the same guy.